On this day in 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg door, thus initiating the Protestant Reformation. If you have never actually read the 95 Theses, you should take some time to do so. They are almost exclusively about indulgences, and many of them rightly condemn the abuses within the Church of Luther’s time. However, many of them also explicitly reject teachings of the Catholic Church. This is the paradox of the Protestant Reformation: it rightly called the Church to reform her erring ways, yet it also ended up rejecting many of the divinely inspired teachings of Christ’s Church – including the very teachings that would help the Church to reform.

The first two Theses exemplify this paradox. The first thesis is:

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

I think all Catholics would give a hearty Amen! to that statement. And if you look at the life of many of the bishops and priests and popes of Luther’s time, you see how needed that call to repentance was (and if you look at our own lives, you see how much it is still needed). I am currently reading a book about the history of the popes, and to be honest, the section that spans between around the 8th century until the 16th is a depressing list of mostly corrupt and scandalous behavior on the part of the popes. Granting the Cardinate to 14-year-old nephews, having concubines, living in luxury: the vices of these popes were legion. And one only has to read a brief biography of Pope Alexander VI (who was pope when Luther was a youth) to realize that a corrupt stench was emanating from Rome and needed to be reformed. So Luther’s call to repentance was long overdue in the Church of his time.

Then we read Luther’s 2nd Thesis:

2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.

Oops. Here we have the classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of realizing that a renewed call to the sacrament of penance would greatly foster a universal call to repentance, Luther instead decides to abandon the very sacrament which Christ instituted to help us repent. Like all heresies, the Protestant Reformation emphasized one truth to the exclusion of others.

In many ways, the Protestant Reformation, despite the great evil it caused, was very beneficial to the Catholic Church. It was in response to the Protestants that the Church called the Council of Trent, which led to sweeping and much-needed reforms within the Church and which strengthened it in a multitude of ways. I honestly wonder if the Protestant Reformation never happened, would the Catholic Church been able to reform itself internally? Regardless of the answer to that question, it is clear that God used the evil of the division of Western Christendom to reform the Church.

Say a prayer today for Martin Luther and pray as well for the continued reformation of the Church.

One thing I don’t think the average Catholic (or non-Catholic) realizes is how steeped in the Bible are the teachings of Pope Benedict. I have been reading his works for over 15 years now, and one thing you recognize quickly is how biblical his theology is. Furthermore, his pontificate has been marked with numerous calls for laity and clergy to become more intimate with the Word of God. In fact, it has been his teachings that inspired me to write Who Do You Say That I Am?

Recently, Pope Benedict renewed this call when he asked all the faithful for a more prayerful and attentive reading of the Gospels, which are the heart of the Bible. The best way to do this is through Lectio Divina, in which we mediate slowly and carefully on the text in silence. The heart of Lectio Divina is letting the Holy Spirit guide you, as the Pope says, “A purely theoretical, profane reading is not enough in order to reach the heart of sacred Scripture. One must read it in the spirit in which it was written and created.” I encourage everyone to spend at least some time every day – even five minutes – practicing this ancient form of biblical reading.

If you are more interested in the Pope’s biblical theology, be sure to read Scott Hahn’s book Covenant and Communion: The Biblical Theology of Pope Benedict XVI. I haven’t read it yet, but I have heard great things about it and I hope to read it soon (if anyone is feeling generous, it’s on my Amazon wish list, and I wouldn’t turn it down as a gift. ).

In my high school and early college days I was “pro-life”, but only politically. I was supportive of exceptions such as rape and incest, and to me, abortion was just one political “issue” among many, and not even the most important one at that. However, my sophomore year of college I actually went to an abortion clinic to pray, and the reality of the evil of abortion hit me in the face like a two-by-four. There were actually little children being brutally killed in that building! The shock this caused jolted me out of my complacency; I realized that legalized abortion is not simply a political issue, it is the most destructive force in the world today.

Because of my experience, I always encourage people to make the effort to go to the local abortion clinic and pray in front of it. But my words are only so effective; what is most compelling is to see our leaders take the battle to the heart of evil. This is what my ordinary, Archbishop Wuerl, did recently:

Archbishop prays rosary outside District abortion clinic

As Archbishop Donald Wuerl led a small group of mostly college age people in praying the rosary outside Planned Parenthood’s Metropolitan Washington clinic on Oct. 24, three sidewalk counselors tried to reach out to people walking into the abortion clinic.

Archbishop Wuerl then spoke quietly to encourage those praying there as part of the 40 Days for Life Campaign against abortion, which began on Sept. 23 and continues through Nov. 1.

“Thank you for being here. Thank you for being a witness. To do it quietly and in prayer is a beautiful form of witness,” the archbishop said. “Abortion may be legal, but it’s wrong. If enough people say it, someday it will cease to be a part of the fabric of our nation.”

God bless you, Archbishop Wuerl! I hope your example leads many others to take their prayers to where the killing is happening.

Especially good for a Friday:

“Mary triumphs with the sword, not in her hand, but in her heart.”

- From the novel Die Magdeburgische Hockzeit, quoted in Loving the Church by Christoph Schönborn.

Christianity Today just posted a fascinating article on their website entitled “Not All Evangelicals and Catholics Together“. It talks about the resistance in some Protestant circles to growing agreement between Evangelicals and Catholics on issues such as justification. I found the following segment particularly interesting:

The committee’s study of the New Perspective focused largely on N.T. Wright, the Anglican bishop of Durham and a prolific biblical scholar. This year Wright published Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. The book counters his critics, especially John Piper, who published The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright in 2007. (See “The Justification Debate: A Primer,” CT, June 2009.)

Another bombshell hit in May 2007, when Francis Beckwith, then president of the Evangelical Theological Society, reverted to Catholicism. The Baylor University philosopher has since published an account of his journey, titled Return to Rome.

“I have no doubt that the New Perspective and Federal Vision have had an effect on the Protestant-Catholic debate,” Beckwith told Christianity Today. “I have met several former evangelical Protestants who have told me that Wright’s work in particular helped them to better appreciate the Catholic view of grace.”

Taylor Marshall went even further. Now a Ph.D. philosophy student at the University of Dallas, he started reading Wright while attending Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He said Wright’s work shifted his assumptions so he could understand the Council of Trent’s position. Marshall does not believe Wright holds to the full Catholic view. But he said Wright’s critique led him to conclude that the Reformers departed from Scripture by teaching “forensic justification through the imputed alien righteousness of Christ.”

Marshall briefly served as an Anglican priest before converting to Catholicism in 2006 and becoming assistant director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. Marshall said he speaks with new Catholic converts every month, about half of whom have been “deeply influenced” by Wright.

“If you buy into Wright’s approach to covenantal theology, then you’ve already taken three steps toward the Catholic Church. Keep following the trail and you’ll be Catholic,” said Marshall, who blogs at PaulIsCatholic.com. “Salvation is sacramental, transformational, communal, and eschatological. Sound good? You’ve just assented to the Catholic Council of Trent.”

Wright himself finds strange the notion that he’s leading people to Rome. “I am sorry to think that there are people out there whose Protestantism has been so barren that they never found out about sacraments, transformation, community, or eschatology. Clearly this person needed a change. But to jump to Rome for that reason is very odd,” he said. The best Reformed, charismatic, Anglican, and even some emerging churches have these emphases, he said.

You can see Marshall’s posts about N.T. Wright leading one to Catholicism here and here, as well as his response to this article here. I briefly discuss my own view of Wright’s writings here.

I think the resistance of some Protestants to his dialogue should not be surprising, simply due to the fact that there is no such thing as a single, unified “Protestant theology” on anything, including such core items as justification. As the article notes about the internal debate among Protestants: “Again and again, it has caused division among Protestants.” It is simply impossible to have agreement between Protestants and Catholics because you don’t have agreement between Protestants. But I’ve been very encouraged by the progress made in recent years to clarify what exactly Catholics and Protestants believe when it comes to justification and other important issues. At the very least, it can define how far apart individual Protestants are from the Catholic view. As is obvious from this article, some are closer than others.

It was inevitable I guess. We are a culture that worships physical looks and devalues human life. Now it has come out that a bio-pharmaceutical company is using cell lines from aborted babies in their new skin care products:

Neocutis’ key ingredient known as “Processed Skin Proteins” was developed at the University of Luasanne from the skin tissue of a 14-week gestation electively-aborted male baby donated by the University Hospital in Switzerland. Subsequently, a working cell bank was established, containing several billion cultured skin cells to produce the human growth factor needed to restore aging skin.

The list of products using the cell line include: Bio-Gel, Journee, Bio-Serum, Prevedem, Bio Restorative Skin Cream and Lumiere.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Seen in an Orthodox church:

(Source)

Translation: “Not turned-off cell phones in church – 100 prostrations”

I think we need something similar in our Catholic churches – perhaps 100 genuflections?

All of us who are striving for holiness by the grace of God are often frustrated by certain persistent sins. These are the sins – sometimes minor, sometimes not so minor – which plague our daily lives. Perhaps it is gossiping at work, or impatience with others, or wasting time. Whatever it might be, persistent sins have the ability to rob us of spiritual strength and lead us to the very dangerous sins of acedia or even despair, which can be fatal to our spiritual lives.

A while back my confessor gave me some great advice regarding persistent sins. He recommended the use of the Jesus Prayer as a weapon against these nagging faults we can’t seem to overcome. For those unfamiliar with it, the Jesus Prayer is an ancient prayer based on the prayer of the Publican which goes:

“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

My confessor recommended that I say this prayer when I am tempted to commit one of these persistent sins. If I fall anyway (usually because I forgot to beg for God’s mercy), then say it immediately after I do so. Saying it before I fall reminds me that I am just a sinner and without God’s mercy I would never be able to overcome my faults. Saying it right after I commit the sin begs God to be merciful to me even though I am a great sinner. Either way, it is a powerful weapon to use to combat those nagging, persistent sins which are extremely difficult to root out.

In practice, I find that at first I usually forget to say the prayer when I am tempted, so I say it immediately after I fall. But eventually I begin to remember to say it during the temptation, and over time I find that it helps me avoid the sin altogether, which leads to less temptations in that area. God is looking to pour out His mercy on us – we just have to avail ourselves of that abundant mercy.

Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!

CNS is reporting that Pope Benedict will next year visit the Shroud of Turin, which is believed by many to be the burial cloth of Christ. The Shroud has a connection with today’s saint, the Apostle Jude Thaddeus. This is from the book The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity:

The history of the Shroud can be traced with assurance to the mid-fourteenth century. Prior to that period, little is known with absolute certainty concerning its whereabouts. A third century Syrian text mentions a cloth that is associated with the miraculous cure of King Abgar V, ruler of Edessa (13-59 A.D.), now called Urfa, in southeastern Turkey. This story was translated almost verbatim by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastical History in 325 A.D.1 According to the story, Abgar suffered from an ailment, perhaps leprosy. Having heard about the healing powers of Jesus, he sent a certain Ananias around the year 31-32 A.D. with a letter to Jesus requesting that He come and heal him. Jesus replied that He was unable to go, but promised to send one of His disciples. It was not until after His death and Resurrection that one of the seventy-two disciples, Thaddeus, brought a cloth to Abgar bearing an image of the face of Jesus. Upon seeing this cloth, Abgar was cured, and the Christian Faith was established in the city. (Actually, the first Christian king of Edessa was Abgar VIII, who ruled from 177-212.) Although the Syrian text mentions a cloth, for reasons unknown, Eusebius makes no reference to it; rather, he states that Abgar saw a vision when he looked at Thaddeus. “Immediately on his entrance there appeared to Abgar a great vision on the face of the Apostle Thaddeus. When Abgar saw this, he did reverence to Thaddeus, and wonder seized all who stood about, for they themselves did not see the vision, which appeared to Abgar alone.”

While the Syrian account refers to Thaddeus as one of the seventy-two disciples of the Lord (cf. Luke 10:1), he soon came to be associated with Jude Thaddeus, the apostle who was a cousin of Jesus (cf. Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3). One of the earliest Byzantine icons to depict Thaddeus holding the Image of Edessa, as the cloth was referred to there, was painted in 550 A.D. and is located at St. Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai. In the Western tradition, St. Jude is often represented holding an image of the face of Jesus over his heart. It has been suggested by the British historian Ian Wilson that the Image of Edessa was actually the Shroud folded in such a way that only the face was visible. Early replicas of the Image were portrayed as an elongated trellis frame with a circle in the middle that depicted the face. A sixth-century text called The Acts of Thaddeus refers to such an image as a tetradiplon, a Greek word which literally means “doubled in four” or, put another way, folded in eight layers. Interestingly, this Greek word is not used for any other object.

Yet again there is talk of an imminent reunion between Rome and the Russian Orthodox Church. This time, it is TAC bishop John Hepworth, who says, “they’re probably apocryphal, but we do know that the Russian Orthodox Church is very close to achieving unity with Rome.” Many Catholics are speculating that the recent overtures of Rome to the Anglicans will be looked at as a possible model for this potential East-West reunion.

I want to be clear in my next statement which is directed towards my fellow Catholics about this possible “reunion”:

IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

I don’t want to be spoil-sport, and I don’t want to discount the possibility of a miracle from the Holy Spirit. Of course a miracle could occur and a reunion could happen, but the miracle would not be some announcement of reunion by hierarchs, it would be the acceptance of that announcement by millions and millions of the faithful. As I’ve mentioned before, there is little grassroots support in the East for reunion at this time, and so any premature announcement would be doomed for failure.

I also think the comparisons between the Anglican situation and the Russian Orthodox are faulty; they are completely different realities. For one thing, Anglo-Catholics belong to an ecclesial community which has been headed for self-destruction the past 50 years. It is a sinking ship and the Pope is mercifully throwing its remaining traditional members a life-line. This is not the case with the Russian Orthodox Church; it is a vital Church with over 1,000 years of history behind it. Its origins predate the East-West schism and they have no external “need” for reunion with Rome.

The Anglican outreach by Pope Benedict cannot be a model for the Church’s work for reunion with the East, and I’m sure the Pope realizes that. With the Anglicans you have a community that has a rich and beautiful spirituality, but it is essentially a variant of Roman Catholicism. They are very Western and the Anglo-Catholics being courted are very close to Rome on many theological fronts. But the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Anglicans, have a theological outlook that is quite different from the Western view; the differences between the East and the West are very deep and will need a long time to sort out. A “personal ordinariate” is a wonderful construct for returning Anglicans, but it would be an insult to Orthodox believers, as it would turn their true Church into just a “spirituality” within the Roman (Western) Church.

I pray daily for the reunion of the apostolic Churches of the East and the West and I hope that much progress is made in my lifetime towards that end. However, I am under no illusions about the barriers to union that currently exist. Like any persistent sin, our divisions will only be overcome by a whole lot of prayer, penance and hard work. Let us look to those three tasks rather than some “quicky” solution.

One of my favorite Protestant theologians is Stanley Hauerwas (whom I was only recently introduced to). Read this sermon for an example why.

Today is the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude, two little-known apostles who between them have one sentence recorded in the Bible:

Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” (John 14:22)

They may have only gotten one of their questions into the Scriptures, but it sure is a doozy. Why does God manifest himself only to some and not to all? Why did he hide himself in the ignominy of the Cross? Why, after the resurrection, didn’t Jesus just show himself to be the Risen Son of God for all the world to see and to worship? And, perhaps most important to us, how is it that we are able to recognize the manifestation of God?

Jesus answered him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. (John 14:23-24)

We must love Jesus and keep his word. By doing so, the Father and the Son (and the Holy Spirit – see verse 26) will make their home within us. Then we, like the apostles Simon and Jude, can go out and make the Father’s love manifest to those around us.

Sts. Simon and Jude, pray for us!

Archbishop Dolan of New York has a new blog and it does not just consist of stuffy “churchy” posts, as can be seen in his latest entry:

It’s been hard for this bishop to be against angels, but fortunately that crisis of conscience has passed with the Yankees 5-2 victory last night over the Los Angeles Angels, giving them their 40th American League pennant and sending the Bronx Bombers back to the World Series.

Rooting for the Yankees has been a very natural thing for me, as I have been a Yankee fan since 1961 when, as an 11 year old in Saint Louis, I closely followed the Maris/Mantle home run race. (Of course, being a Cardinal’s fan is a part of my D.N.A.)

With the Angels out of the way, and my beloved Redbirds having been sent home in the first round, there will be no dilemmas when it comes to cheering unreservedly for the Yankees in the Fall Classic.

However, I will feel bad for my friend and mentor, Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia, when the Yankees beat his Phillies.

And for Mets fans, please remember that October 28, the first day of the World Series, is also the Feast of Saint Jude, the Patron Saint of Impossible Cases.

I have been a fan of Archbishop Dolan for a while now and his love of the Cardinals is a noble one I can respect. But his support of the Yankees does give me pause. How can the good Archbishop so publicly support the Evil Empire? How can he abandon the National League so easily? Pray for Archbishop Dolan that he might eventually see the light and abandon his support of the $200 million team.

(Note: my comments should not be construed to mean that I support the Phillies. I consider them to be, in the words of Ad Orientem, the Evil Empire’s National League cousin).

I have always believed that eventually the abortion industry will collapse upon itself; like communism, it is built on lies and as such it cannot maintain itself forever. One of the main weapons that will bring it down is science, specifically ultrasound technology.

The Endowment for Human Development has a series of incredible videos which show the development of a child in the womb. Only one who has been blinded by the Enemy cannot acknowledge the humanity of the unborn child so clearly shown in these videos. Check them out!

So Dan Brown would like to meet the pope. I imagine the conversation would be more awkward than an episode of The Office. Perhaps it would go something like this:

Dan Brown: It sure is an honor for you to meet me, Mr. Pope.

Pope Benedict: I am always happy to meet one of God’s precious children.

DB: You know, of course, that the whole Da Vinci Code business wasn’t personal. I mean, it was just a novel, after all…even though everything in it was true.

PB: What was that?

DB: Oh, nothing important. Also, those Opus Dei guys aren’t still sore, are they? It was all in fun, you know.

PB: I am sure that they are praying for you and only wish you the best.

DB: That sure is sporting of them. I hear that you wrote a book or two as well, including one about Jesus. Is that true?

PB: Yes, Jesus of Nazareth was about the historical reality that is the God-man. It explains that all the evidence clearly points to the historical reliability of the Gospels, and that we can trust their accuracy. We have been made for God and every person can find complete fulfillment by giving their lives to Jesus Christ.

DB: (silence)

DB: So, did you read my latest book yet? It’s another best-seller.

PB: I have not had time to read it. I hope and pray that it lifts people’s hearts and minds to contemplation of divine realities.

DB: That’s not exactly what I intended, but it sure is a page-turner! Well, it has been great chatting with you, your popiness.

PB: May God bless you and bring you closer to Him, my son.